Kelly
points out that, in the counselling
and psychotherapy situation, if we are to be able to step into another
person's
shoes and try to see the world through that person's eyes, we still
have to
have something to give us an understanding of what we see. He describes
a set
of"professional constructs"
through which to gain that understanding. The important thing is that
we do not
try to understand the way another person sees the world by filtering it
through
our own set of constructs and values. The professional constructs are
basically
all those that make up personal construct theory, such as, preverbal,loose,tight, superordinateorcore
constructs. By
trying to understand the world in this way one
is, in fact, diagnosing what the problem
is that prevents the client getting
on the move again.

But there is another context in which
the
construct of subsuming is of use, which resulted from the development
of the laddering
process. In this the interviewee is encouraged to move up his or herconstruing system to more and more abstract (superordinate)
constructs. Fransella argues that the interviewer needs to be able to
quite
literally subsume the person's construing and so glimpse how exactly
the client
construes the world. This skill of subsuming does not relate to
subsuming a
person's construing within the set of professional constructs. It
involves the
interviewer being able to suspend his or
her own values, at least for a
short time. It results in "true" listening. Nothing is desirable or
undesirable,
good or bad. There is only interest, surprise, respect, sometimes
amazement - "fancy
seeing the world that way - wonderful!' as one looks at the world
through
someone else's eyes without one's own value system getting in the way.